


A Message to Lead Myself Here

by catgirl220



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Episode: The Day of the Doctor, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 09:38:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6324175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catgirl220/pseuds/catgirl220
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Bad Wolf had revealed herself to everyone, not just the War Doctor in "The Day of the Doctor"?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Message to Lead Myself Here

 

She sees him right away— _her_ Doctor. 

 

He is clad in the usual brown suit, but his eyes are old and weary. There is no companion with him. 

 

The War Doctor doesn’t notice her reaction when she sees his tenth incarnation. He doesn’t see the way she stares at him but flicks her eyes away when he walks closer, unknowingly, to where she stands. 

 

She is not Rose Tyler, but she is the Bad Wolf. She stems from Rose’s strength and the Time Vortex—she is a new, cheeky being popping up throughout the universe. 

 

She is not Rose Tyler, but seeing him still hurts. 

 

The Bad Wolf reaches for his timeline, taking a millisecond to examine it and— _oh._ No wonder she gets that ache in her chest when she looks at the Tenth Doctor. His companions are gone, and he has been throwing the laws of time out the window. Bad Wolf thinks it’s almost a good thing that his song is ending soon, but the part of her that is (was, could have been, might be, almost) Rose Tyler rebukes her strongly for the very thought. 

 

But now is not the time for this speculation. The Bad Wolf has work to do first.

 

The War Doctor (she refuses to call him the Warrior) thinks she is the Moment. She might have been, once upon a time, but why can’t she be both? The Moment and the Bad Wolf, combined into one form for this second in the ever-changing time.

 

She remains invisible to everyone else, although she is tempted to let Clara Oswald catch a glimpse. She’s clever, that Impossible Girl, the savior of the Doctor. And Bad Wolf can appreciate an act like the one Clara has committed—scattering herself throughout the Doctor’s timestream. Clara is a good match for him. 

 

 _Why can’t they see you?_ The War Doctor thinks at her. 

 

She doesn’t respond. 

 

—————————————————————————————————

 

Time can be rewritten. She knows this because Rose knows this, because Rose Tyler has witnessed that firsthand (and caused it, in a few cases). And now, they have done it. They rewrite time—the three Doctors, the Bad Wolf, and one Clara Oswald. 

 

“Oh, Bad Wolf girl, I could kiss you!” The War Doctor says jubilantly. 

 

“Yeah, that’s gonna happen,” She retorts, but she is smiling. She is so proud of them. 

 

The smile vanishes from the Tenth Doctor’s face. “Sorry, did you just say Bad Wolf?” 

 

He looks around, and Bad Wolf can feel the timelines shifting around them. There is a possibility where she does nothing, only disappears silently, and conversation and events move on. He’ll forget this as soon as he leaves. 

 

But she can never resist him, “those big sad eyes,” as Clara says. It’s a different Doctor that Clara knows, a different man, but the eyes stay the same, even if they change color sometimes. So old, so full of wisdom and joy, and so filled with pain. 

 

So she slips down off of her seat and throws caution to the wind, letting invisibility roll away like morning mist on Gallifrey. 

 

Everyone except the War Doctor jumps when they see her, but she has eyes only for him. 

 

The Tenth Doctor’s mouth falls open when he sees her, and on his face is an expression of such hope and sadness that it breaks her heart, just a little bit. 

 

“Rose,” He mouths, but as soon as he says it he knows it’s not true. The outfit, hair—it can’t be Rose, happy with his clone in a parallel world. 

 

She shakes her head, and the pieces click into place. _The Moment. Its consciousness. Bad Wolf._

 

He walks towards her, even though she’s not his Rose. But the look on her face is the same—Bad Wolf watches him, joy and sadness battling for dominance in her eyes. 

 

“Who—” Clara says, before the Eleventh Doctor clamps his hand firmly over her mouth. The room is silent, watching the two approach each other. 

 

He leans down and rests his forehead against hers, ever so gently. She is solid, and they don’t break eye contact—brown to brown, staring at each other as an understanding passes between them. 

 

Clara feels like she’s trespassing upon something incredibly intimate, and with the Doctor’s hand still stopping her mouth, she averts her gaze to the floor. Questions can wait until later. 

 

Rose’s Doctor draws back from the Bad Wolf just an inch, wiping tears from her cheek with his thumb. 

 

“Can weapons cry?” He asks her. 

 

Bad Wolf looks at him one last time and responds, “Always.” 

 

She vanishes. Inside each TARDIS, the console sparks in recognition. 

 

—————————————————————————————————

 

The Tenth Doctor waits until he is safe inside his ship before he lets his controlled visage fall, leaning heavily back against a coral strut with an exhale. 

 

The TARDIS starts to hum inside his mind, notes rising and falling. 

 

“Are you singing to me?” He asks her. 

 

She keeps going, song slow and mournful and comforting as the engines whir around him.

 

“Quite right, too.” The Doctor says, swallowing a lump in his throat. 

 

—————————————————————————————————

The newly-regenerated Ninth Doctor examines his hands, pleased with the decrease in wrinkles. Guilt and sorrow eat away at him—he thrusts it aside. The Time War is ended now. He did what he had to do. 

 

Pushing thoughts of his deed aside, the Doctor looks for a mirror, but the TARDIS seems to be hiding one from him. There is a nagging at the back of his head—something he had willed himself to remember. 

 

He pauses, scratches the back of his head. It must have been important, whatever it was, but he can’t for the life of him recall it. 

 

He groans in aggravation— _ah! A flash of golden eyes, a cheerful smile. London. Bad Wolf._

 

The Doctor pushes himself to remember more, searching every nook and cranny of his mind, but nothing else comes. 

 

He doesn’t know what Bad Wolf is, but it seems important. He muses to himself, setting the coordinates on the TARDIS. _London._  

 

It takes him a few tries, but the Doctor gets there eventually, tracking a signal that he identifies as the Nestene Consciousness. He follows the signal to the basement of a shop, where a young woman is being cornered by Nestene henchmen disguised as manikins. 

 

He grabs her hand. “Run!” 

 

On the rooftop, the image of a blond woman in baggy clothes throws her head back and laughs. She vanishes a moment before the explosion, leaving behind a patch of thin air and the last notes of a wolf’s howl. 

 

—————————————————————————————————

 

“Who was that woman?” Clara asks, leaning against the railing of the TARDIS. The Doctor—her Doctor—fidgets with the controls, avoiding her eyes. 

 

“And that man was past you, right?” She continues. “Why was he so…sad to see her?” 

 

The Doctor turns to her then. “Do you really want to know?” 

 

Clara studies him for a moment. “Yes,” She decides. 

 

“Alright then,” He says, fixing his bow-tie. “Make yourself comfortable. I’m going to tell you a story.” 


End file.
